Posted
by
samzenpus
on Sunday August 19, 2012 @12:42PM
from the play-time dept.

Croakyvoice writes "Nintendo has today released the 3DS XL in the U.S. The console comes with features such as screens which are 90% bigger in size than the original 3DS, a much needed improvement in battery life and also the 3D effect on the console has noticeably improved. The 3DS XL is Nintendo's attempt at even moreso dominating the handheld console market over the PSVita, but also bringing back the gamers lost to the likes of Android and iOS devices. The other major 3DS news of the day is the release of New Super Mario Bros 2, a continuation of the DS game released in 2006. In Japan the game has sold over 800,000 copies since game launch and Nintendo will be hopeful to replicate that success in the U.S."

Pixel density is lower, pixel size is greater, but the screen is so much easier to see and use. 3d is now an option for me, where it wasn't before.

I traded my red 3ds for a red 3ds XL this morning. The finish is worse( no fancy acryllic finishes or metal bits, no short aluminum pen), but it definitely feels more sturdy, and is so much easier to use that I don't mind it feeling like a cheaper version of what I had.

How is '90% larger' underhanded and deceptive? As far as I can tell, Nintendo say the screens are 90% bigger, and they're 90% bigger. It's about as deceptive as saying 'don't put your hand in the flame - it'll get burnt'.

No, it shouldn't. Saying the screen is 90% larger means that it's 90% larger. It says nothing about diagonal measurements.

You probably also whined about the use of bits instead of bytes to denote ROM capacity in the old days, despite the fact that it's a perfectly accurate term, and in fact mirrors the way that EPROMs and RAM chips were measured and marketed as components.

You probably also whined about the use of bits instead of bytes to denote ROM capacity in the old days, despite the fact that it's a perfectly accurate term, and in fact mirrors the way that EPROMs and RAM chips were measured and marketed as components.

I absolutely agree that in this case the OP is complaining about a non-issue, and I don't agree that it would automatically be assumed that "90% bigger" would be taken to refer to the diagonal.

However, the example you gave *was* (IMHO) an example of manufacturers being intentionally misleading. Virtually all consumer-oriented software back then was quoted in terms of its kilobyte or megabyte footprint (*). While the use of megabits may undeniably have been technically correct, its previously near-unknown

The funny thing is, Nintendo is probably the healthiest game/hardware maker in the business. Unlike Sony/Microsoft, Nintendo usually makes a profit on their hardware rather than selling it at a loss in hope of recouping their loss via games. The Wii has outsold the 360 and the PS3, the 3DS has outsold the PS Vita by leaps and bounds.

Nintendo is currently losing money, last quarterly result that I saw. The Wii also has not outsold the 360 for quite some time.

Nintendo would do better to give up on handheld hardware and focus on finding a good way of porting their franchises to Android/iOS instead. It's horribly impractical for most people to bring another device around with them besides their phone.

Actually the Wii is kicking both the Xbox and PS3 when it comes to units sold.Wii had a huge initial spike and has since leveled off and been overtaken by the more steady sales rate of the other two, but lifetime units sold it's still #1, and will probably remain that way for the rest of this generation.

Wii: 96.56 million (as of June 30, 2012)Xbox: 67.2 million (as of April 19, 2012)PS3: 63.9 million (as of March 31, 2012)

I am willing to bet that a far greater number of 360 and PS3 owners still use their consoles though. Most Wii consoles have been relegated to dust collection.

Yep but at what cost? Many of my friends haven't played their Wii in 1+ years. That didn't stop them amassing a huge collection of games. Unlike Blizzard Nintendo tend to put money in the bank and walk. None of this selling things at a loss and hoping to make it up elsewhere. If they made a dollar profit on the Wii, they made a dollar profit. They also make a profit on every game too. They don't need you to keep playing.

All they really need for you to do is realise that the Wii U is "so much better (tm)" an

If they port to Android and iOS they would have to sell at Android and iOS prices. Or at least cheaper. The titles you care for though contain more content and work than "Angry birds" or "Ninja fruits" or whatever it's called.

Not everyone with a portable gaming device brings it with them all the time..

Earlier years though I thought the somewhat nice (I thought back then..) combination would ha

Maybe financially they're doing well, if you're really into stock valuations. But with gamers, they're on the verge of becoming irrelevant - everybody know there's no good 3rd party games, just endless re-treads of a few (admittedly beloved) franchises. Wii sold a lot of units to people who put the Wii in the back of the closet after half a year.

That's the odd thing about Nintendo though, they generally end up defining the generation and while 95% of the games on the system are utter crap the other 5% is the stuff that defines the generation. The Wii has had a lot of gems, Super Mario Galaxy (2), Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Skyward Sword, and Xenoblade. The games you can't get on the PS3 or 360.

While I have to say I use my Wii a lot less than I do my 360 (or 3DS for that matter) easily 4 out of the 5 best games I've played this generation have bee

Ken's cancer has just recently begun to spread to his right lymph node but his Oncologist has assured us that this is 80 percent curative if he gets the needed surgery in time.

Unfortunately, his 1100 dollar a month SSI disability disqualifies him for Medicaid care and the local county low-income insurance he was receiving. This leaves us with about 2 weeks to either raise enough money for at least the OR for the surgery (we are hopeful of finding a surgeon to do the work pro bono) or raise enough money for the entire procedure. We've spent hours upon hours researching and contacting the links some of you have provided but they are so limited in scope that 90 percent of them are not helpful at all.

We are looking at two weeks, maybe three before the cancer spreads past the point of surgery being an option. After that, we've been told just to make him as comfortable as possible until he passes. I'm not ready to accept that.

I opened this thread to read about the 3DS XL and New Super Mario Bro's 2 (which I've bought via the online shop and I'm downloading on to my regular 3ds). I'm kind of interested in the XL as I'm hoping the larger size will be more accommodating to my adult hands, and the battery life of the 3ds is perhaps even worse than my PS Vita.

That said, thank you for posting this here. After spending $39.99, I've now donated $50 to Ken Starks. I had never heard of the HeliOS project so I had to look it up... You m

Thanks a bunch, even though I don't know the guy personally. I only knew about them because it has been posted three times to the Firehose, unsuccessfully

There's a distro named HelioOS, which I think he contributed to. More importantly, it was the name under which he and his buddies refurbish computers and donate them to kids around Austin (it's "Reglue" now). Google 'Ken Starks TX' and you'll see.

That's interesting. I won't vouch for Cuban famed health services (I live in Venezuela where they've sent an army of hacks as "payment" for oil), but latin american countries could work. I quoted your suggestion at his blog. If you want, spread the word; more people means better odds.

Ken actually had an offer from an off-shore surgeon to do the work pro-bono. Sadly, Ken's passport has expired, and the amount of time to get a new passport is prohibitive. We have 2-3 weeks at most to scrounge up the money for the surgery, after which the cancer will have spread too far to be operable.:(

You can get a new passport in 2-3 days if you ask for a rush job. It costs more, but it's doable. I actually had to do that once before when an overseas employer waited until the last minute to inform me that I was hired and needed to be there within the week.

I like the format/size of the DS's, and I wouldn't mind having a little hand held game machine, but I just can't get over all that hardware sitting there and no way to use other apps than just the games. These things have just about everything one would need to call it a micro-netbook or something like that, if only it had any way to do anything other than play games. The homebrew on the DS is there, barely, but they should really just support it out of the box. For example, my household would probably have 3 less ebook readers, and might have skipped 2 tablet purchases and a netbook.

The bottom screen could easily be a small keyboard (obviously not as nice as a netbook, laptop, or desktop, but it'd work as good as a smartphone onscreen keyboard). You could also do a very nice email client on that thing, using both displays while reading mail. And it has good audio/video support already, so why not a multimedia player (mp3 at least)? Toss a video chat thing on there as well... that'd be kinda handy. As it is, it does a specific set of games better than my phone, tablet, and netbook, but completely lacks every other feature they have, and it's entirely a software issue - that seems very silly IMO.

FWIW, it irks me just as much that game consoles also have a very large void of apps (and I hate saying "apps", but it fits here). Why can't my PS3 w/ BT keyboard fire up a terminal, ssh, vnc, firefox/chrome, vlc, thunderbird, skype, rythmbox/etc, etc etc etc?

That is the walled garden problem. As for the 3ds, it does have Netflix, which is nice if you have headphones, since the 3ds speakers sound a bit hollow.

I think that's a movie problem - the 3DS has some of the best sound on a portable platform using internal speakers. But I suspect it's because the 3DS games use Dolby Surround which helps enhances the audio significantly. DS/DSi games can't use it, and they do sound significantly worse. Perhaps Netflix needs to enable Dolby Surround.

The 3DS does have a built-in music player already, if you didn't notice. It support MP3 as well as M4A and it lets you share the names of your most-listened-to songs via streetpass. It's not exactly full-featured and it's mostly meant as a toy, but it's still there.

As for the other things you suggested... Yeah... I wish the 3DS could have user-developed applications as well.

FWIW, it irks me just as much that game consoles also have a very large void of apps (and I hate saying "apps", but it fits here). Why can't my PS3 w/ BT keyboard fire up a terminal, ssh, vnc, firefox/chrome, vlc, thunderbird, skype, rythmbox/etc, etc etc etc?

Because then you wouldn't call it a game console. You'd call it a general purpose computer. It irks me as well: Artificial scarcity and functionality restrictions need to be shunned.

I remember playing machines that could only operate one game. Pinball is still fabulously fun, but it's not a market dominator now. The Arcade Cabinets came and followed the same model, one machine, one game. Their programmability allowed the game rules to become more complex and artificial displays freed us from the lim

Because then you wouldn't call it a game console. You'd call it a general purpose computer.

This is what most non-nerds don't get... consoles ARE general purpose computers, only they've been crippled into only working with games and possibly a few other select tasks. This has been made eminently clear by all the aftermarket dashboards for the X-box that would turn it into a full-blown computer, not to mention the whole PS3 Linux fiasco.

Along the way came the personal computer. Its primary focus wasn't games at all, but performing and computational task, including communicating with others. At first these machines couldn't run games as well as the dedicated game console hardware could, but in time the general purpose computers improved and surpassed the expensive game consoles in terms of processing power

Not really. Gaming computers have always been more powerful than consoles, provided they're reasonably recent. There's a reason why most console ports have limitati

This has bugged me as well. It's a nice piece of hardware, has a touch screen, audio, video, few buttons, wifi. Any app that works your phone could be adapted to work on the 3DS, if the platform was opened up.

It sounds like what you are wanting is one of the bazillion knockoffs they have at Chinamart. This is why I'm glad that for the most part i have completely weaned my two teen boys off of consoles (I say most part because the youngest will be buying one of these for a single game series he loves that isn't sold on any other platform) because of all the waste. Once its done as a game system? Into the closet it goes, right beside the GC and PS-2.

Is that an iOS or Android device is likely something that you _always_ have with you. I never go anywhere where my phone isn't in my pocket, and I always have a handful of games with me for a quick fix. As nice as the 3DS XL might be, it's something I would have to carry around extra, and I can promise, it would be left at home most of the time, like my POS camera.

The app vs dedicated carts is a whole other argument. $10 or so will buy you a premium iOS game, most are $1-$3. The 3DS games are $40, thoug

Phone games are for people looking to kill time by playing a game. Portable consoles are for people who love games and don't want to leave them at home. They're entirely different markets and can coexist as easily as magazines and books.

3dsxl is just a 3ds with some tweaks from the dsi which is just a tweaked ds lite which is just a tweaked ds. And "new" super mario 2 is just new super mario wii which is just new super mario ds.

Nintendo hasnt had an original idea in decades. Everything they release could be prefaced with "Another fucking" and it would fit. Another fucking zelda game, another fucking mario game, another fucking ds, another fucking pokemon game and so on.

The first DS I bought on launch day is still working fine (despite being peed on by a cat), and I still have about twenty two games I haven't even started on it, so I can't justify buying this magical box of Nintendo magic just yet.